


Not Unchanged

by Roselightfairy



Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Best Friends, Burns, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Sea-longing, background Legolas/Gimli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24754033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: There is something about the way he moves through the world, a lightness to his touch and a distance in his eyes, that make him seem only half-here – almost insubstantial, like a passing wisp of the sea-mist neither of them has ever seen.But then – perhaps he is not wholly to blame for that.  Perhaps he only seems half-here through the blurred haze over Eleniel’s own right eye.Legolas is not the same elf he was when he departed from Rivendell . . . but neither is Eleniel. Two old friends come to terms with the changes within themselves and discuss how to find their places in a new world.
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Finding a Voice: OCs and Extras [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2054061
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Not Unchanged

**Author's Note:**

> Set firmly within _Finding a Voice_ 'verse and based on the following line from _Building_ : "The last months had not been easy on him or on Eleniel; both battling wounds – her to body; him to spirit – that would never fully heal, and they had agreed to venture into this new beginning together, as anything else, though they both knew their time together could only be temporary." When I wrote that line two years ago, I didn't know what that conversation would have looked like . . . but I realized I wanted to find out.

Legolas is different now.

It is not a new revelation, but rather something Eleniel knew to expect from the moment he agreed to Lord Elrond’s request to join a mission to destroy the Enemy’s ring. How could he not be, after a journey that would take him to lands he had never seen before with companions he had never met, that would test him to his very limits – and on which she would not be able to accompany him? It would be a miracle if he returned at all, she thought with despair when they parted; his return unchanged would be too much to hope for.

And yet – upon his return, the moment he first held her gaze and she could see his marriage in his eyes – still it was a shock, for of all she might have expected from his long absence, it was not this. Not a marriage, not – the sea.

He is returned now from his visit to Erebor, returned with different braids and prouder posture, but his changes run deeper even than that. There is something about the way he moves through the world, a lightness to his touch and a distance in his eyes, that make him seem only half-here – almost insubstantial, like a passing wisp of the sea-mist neither of them has ever seen.

But then – perhaps he is not wholly to blame for that. Perhaps he only seems half-here through the blurred haze over Eleniel’s own right eye.

* * *

The dining hall still feels strange in its new incarnation as an infirmary – even now, even months after its conversion. Or perhaps the strangeness comes from sleeping there, still, returning to her small cot when she rests – too often, still too often – so she might call out for a healer when the pain drags her out of her dreams; so they might rouse her when she gasps and chokes in her sleep. All of this – it is a weakness she cannot bear, a vulnerability she loathes – and one she cannot prevent, no matter how hard she fights, no matter how long she tries to stave off sleep.

Others from their unit came to visit her, at first, when she could not move from her bed. Now that she can rise, they walk with her down the halls and out into the forest, never too far away from the halls – never far enough to catch a whiff of smoke, though the scent still haunts her dreams.

Her mother never comes to visit her, but Eleniel stopped expecting that long ago. The princess came sometimes, at first – and Eleniel thought once or twice in those pain-hazed early days that she had seen Thranduil himself sitting at her bedside. But she does not trust her mind or her memory enough to ask anyone if it is true.

In those early days, she longed for Legolas. Now he is here – indeed, he visits her more often than anyone – but half the time his spirit does not come with his body. It is away somewhere, under another mountain or winging away west on the backs of sea-birds.

She wonders if he truly does not see her – or if he simply knows some part of her does not want him to.

* * *

“You ought to have seen Faimes, Legolas,” Hadril says from her cross-legged position on the end of Eleniel’s bed. “I think she must have felled three spiders with a single arrow, for I could swear that I only saw the one fly.”

Faimes waves that away. “And I say again, your vision must have been muddled. I did no such thing.”

“Take compliments when they are offered to you, sister mine,” advises Damion. He is never still; always some part of him is in motion – a different kind of restless energy from Legolas’s, he always has something in his hands to toy with. Today it is a chestnut, which he tosses from hand to hand as he speaks. “It occurs so rarely, after all” –

Lachor laughs, and Faimes reaches out to swipe Damion’s chestnut from the air without bothering to counter his words. He makes a lunge for it and she tosses it to Hadril before he can reach her. Damion half-rises to go for Hadril, but she passes the nut on to Duvaineth, who sends it on to Legolas –

“Eleniel!” he says, and that is all the warning she needs; in instincts nearly as old as she is herself, she is turning toward his voice, already reaching up to catch –

Reaching with her right hand. She does not even remember until it is too close and her eye does not focus on it the way it should; she makes a grab for the chestnut and her hand is clumsy and slow. It bounces off her palm with a searing jolt that forces a hiss through her clenched teeth – and her fingers cannot move fast enough to close around the nut; it falls into her lap and rolls off the bed.

No one pays it any mind. Every soldier from their unit has twisted to look at her, some rising onto their knees, with the same concerned expression she has seen from everyone she meets in the last months.

“Eleniel,” says Faimes at last. “Are you” –

“I am fine!” The words snap from her throat like the lash of a whip, but the sharpness of her tone is not enough to quell the lump rising in her throat. She clenches her teeth harder and swallows, ignoring the pain, even as her left eye films over to match her right.

Dimly, through the ringing in her ears, she hears Legolas’s voice. He is ordering the others away, his tone quiet but firm as it is around these he knows and trusts, these people he has led for so long, always with Eleniel close by his side, always except for –

She closes her eyes, but she needs no sight to hear them leaving. All of them but Legolas.

The cot shifts as he climbs up to settle beside her, facing her; she can feel the warmth of him, but she does not dare to open her eyes. They are alone.

“Eleniel,” he says softly. “I am sorry.”

Of course he would begin with that. The response is as automatic as breath. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Do I not?”

“It was an accident,” she says, stiffly. “That I know.”

“I do not mean that.”

She opens her eyes at last. Even through the stinging blur of her tears she can see the gentleness on his face. “Then what?” she whispers.

He does not answer at first – not in words. He reaches out and takes her right hand very carefully into his own. “Does this hurt?”

“No,” she lies.

They cannot lie to one another, not they two. He lets it go and takes her left instead, and she has no strength to fight him. “I am sorry I was not here,” he says quietly.

She lets out a choked laugh. “I said already, there is no need for apology.”

“Perhaps not,” he says. “But I regret it nonetheless.”

“Regret what?” It is not bitterness, exactly. She could never resent him for doing or being anything. She does not know what emotion it is that wells within her, that hones the edge of her words to something sharp and jagged. “Regret your part in ending the greatest threat to our world that our generation has ever known? Regret your role in a mission with such a noble goal?”

“It was that,” he muses, “or so they say. But in truth, it felt like nothing of the kind. Hopeless, mostly; drudgery, at times. Terrifying, at others – and not for the reasons most would expect.” He squeezes her hand. “But in the end, I was but one warrior among many, of little consequence one way or another. And even as I made my way to the plains of Mordor for a final stand, I could not help but think about you here at home, fighting without me by your side.”

He is not lying; she knows it. Always they are honest with one another – and yet somehow it is not enough, not enough to release whatever it is that she feels gathering in her throat, drawing tighter bands around her always-aching chest. “We managed,” she says gruffly.

“Of course you did.” There it is, the familiar note in his voice, the drawing-back-and-up, the edge of fear and regret. “I did not mean to suggest – that I – when I apologize for not being here, I do not mean to say that I think I could have saved you. That my presence would have made a difference. I only mean – it did not feel right not to be with you, with my family – to return to a forest where battles had been fought in my absence” –

It breaks her; it always does. “You know I did not mean that, Legolas,” she sighs. She opens her eyes, softening with regret at the apology in his own; clutches his fingers when he would pull them away. “Or rather, that I know _you_ did not mean it. It is only – I know not.” She hesitates. “Do you truly regret it?”

“I – no.” He lowers his head, and she can see the patterns of his new braids, the gold beads flashing in the low light. He has never cared for jewelry before. “Or – yes, but no? Truly, I cannot say.” He lifts his own free hand, following the path of her eyes, and catches the slender braid between his fingers. “I wish I could have fought here with you and my family. I wish I could have been by your side. I wish I had not heard the gulls. And yet – there are things I cannot regret.”

“And I could not ask you to,” she says, all of the bitterness draining at last away. “I cannot think how to say it, it is only – I suppose some part of me had hoped that your return would change things back to the way they were. That if” – and here is the truth, the truth she did not even know was there – “that if you returned, somehow all this would be undone,” she raises her right hand, “and we would be as we were, and we might fall easily back into – but into what?” There the imagining stops. “We are different, and the world is different, and I do not know how to live in it anymore.”

“Neither do I,” he confesses. “I spent so long yearning for my home, and now I have come back and I find it so changed that I know not where I fit any longer. Where do I belong, if not as a soldier? I fear – Eleniel, I fear I cannot stay here very much longer.”

It is no surprise; she has seen the way he walks in this world, but the words rock her anyway, a dull throb in the chest very different from the ragged ache of her breath. “What will you do, then?” For all she tries to prevent them, images wash over her then: of her dear friend consigning himself to a life within a mountain of stone, a world outside of the forests he loves – or on a ship, setting sail to the West –

But when he speaks, his words come out quickly and with firm certainty. “There is a land,” he says. “Ithilien. It has long been contested between Gondor and Mordor, and I can feel it – it gives off the same ache as here,” he waves a hand, “of a land suppressed and tainted, and yet wild and beautiful and beloved. It cries out for the touch of wood-elves – wood-elves who know this kind of pain.” His face lights up as he speaks; he leans forward, and she sees in him suddenly a life, a _presence_ , that has been missing for some time. “It called out to me from the moment I set foot there, and I have hopes that the king Elessar will grant me leave to return with others.”

“With others?” Something opens up in Eleniel’s mind then, a path – she and Legolas have communicated wordlessly for so long that he does not need to say it; she knows where his words will lead . . . and yet she must ask, must say the words aloud.

And he answers. “Come with me,” he says earnestly, releasing his braid to clasp her hand between both of his. “Come with me to Ithilien and help me make it a land of beauty again. We have said that the world is changing, that we no longer know how to live in this home that is become strange to us. And I may not be able to regret these changes; I may have found new love – but that does not mean I want to leave the old behind.” His eyes have taken on the spark she knows so well, excitement and sincerity and _life_ , and at his look – at his words of hope – she feels something within her stir back to life as well. “Come with me, Eleniel, and let us heal together.”

If she were anyone else – if he were anyone else – she would hedge, would ask questions, would tell him she needed time to come to a decision. But she is herself, and he is Legolas – changed he might be, but still her dearest friend, her closest family, an extension of her self. And if he sees a place for them in this new world, a place where they can learn to fit again, then she can believe him.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I will come.”


End file.
